Text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities are being increasingly incorporated into a wide variety of electronic devices. For example, TTS is used to read articles, emails, text messages and the like and to communicate with intelligent personal assistant applications on electronic devices such as computers (e.g., portable computers) and telephones. TTS is also used for navigation with such devices as well as dedicated global positioning system (GPS) devices.
The environment in which TTS is used may be noisy due to any number of factors such background conversation, music, passing trains and so forth. One solution is to detect the ambient or environmental noise and increase the volume of the TTS output in response to increased environmental noise. However, there is an upper limit to volume control which may not be sufficient for certain environmental noise. Prolonged periods with high volume can also be annoying for the user.